FOR A SEASON

You know that saying – people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime? I’ve been thinking about that a lot. The older you get, the more you have to accept and allow, accept and allow. A constant practice of letting go. Allowing someone to know you, accepting when a circumstance changes, releasing them from your life …

What is the balance between honoring yourself, evolving, becoming more functional, but also realizing that some things – and some people – only come around once? What are you supposed to do with all of the information, experiences, feelings and wounds you accumulate over a lifetime? And when someone close to you leaves or you see the mortality of a person your age, what becomes of the good advice and the high roads and the tough love? In the end, don’t we all wish we had tasted sweeter pleasures, jumped higher, taken it farther, said “fuck it” more often and dived in head first? Why are we always trying to do the right thing, as if we could possibly know what that is? Why are we always trying to understand our motivations, as if they could possibly be known? Why are we always giving up the things we want most, as if we could ever stop the craving?

In the day-to-day we pat ourselves on the backs for making the hard choices. And then, when the big shit happens, we think – what for? Why didn’t I just say or do all of the things I longed for in the deepest places of my heart? Why didn’t I go for it? Why did I think I got more than this one wild and precious life? (As Mary Oliver phrased it.)

I hope that I find a way to leave this planet with no regrets. I hope I get bolder and riskier the longer I’m here. I hope I can say all of the words that lay silently on my lips without waiting for my last breath. We are alive. We are fucking alive and we should do something about that.